Thursday, September 30, 2010

Turkey’s vice-premier says that after Turkey gains entry to the EU, it will eventually control it. He voiced this opinion at World Leadership Forum in New York during a plenary session of the UN.

In other news, a man in Saudi Arabia told police that his daughter was abducted by a djinn and has disappeared. This is not the first time that a djinn has possessed the poor girl: in a previous incident the spirit carried her off to Riyadh. The police have mounted an intensive search for the girl.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, DF, JD, KGS, Kitman, TB, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Long-time readers will recall Martin Bosma, whom I met on a visit to Diana West’s house a couple of years ago. Mr. Bosma is a Dutch MP for the Party for Freedom (De Partij voor de Vrijheid, the PVV) and an associate of Geert Wilders.

As it happens, Martin Bosma has just published a book, whose release happily coincides with the formation of a new center-right government strongly influenced by his own party. Mr. Bosma’s book is about the history of the PVV, his role in the party, and the recent upheavals in the Dutch political scene.

Our Flemish correspondent VH has compiled a report about the launch of Martin Bosma’s book. He begins with an introduction compiled from various newspaper articles:

Martin Bosma — member of parliament for the PVV, its fraction secretary, quadruple campaign leader, and the man of the hour of the Group Wilders — has published a book on the multicultural Netherlands and the beginning of the PVV.

In his book “De schijn-élite van de valse munters” (The Pseudo-Elite of the Counterfeiters) — with as subtitle “Drees[1], the extreme right, the Sixties, useful idiots, Group Wilders and me” — the PVV MP Martin Bosma unfolds his range of ideas, but also shines a personal light on the years of his political career, the years in which Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh were murdered and Geert Wilders developed into the most outspoken politician in the Netherlands.

In recent decades, society has changed dramatically, with its main development being the multicultural society. The population, however, was always opposed to the influx. Why then did it still happen anyway? If there are so many forces gathering to put every effort possible into constantly stepping up the mass immigration, there apparently must be compelling reasons to sacrifice the stability of the Netherlands for this.

In his book, Martin Bosma lays the blame on the spirit of May 1968 and the elites who then received a blow from which they never recovered. The leftist elites are just as blind to Islam as they were in those days to Communism. [source Villa Media]

PVV feared Fitna might become fatal to the party

PVV leader Geert Wilders took into account the possibility that the release of the anti-Islam film Fitna (2008) might be fatal to his growing party. So says Martin Bosma, Wilders’ second-in-command and a PVV MP, in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Due to the heavy pressure under which he and Geert Wilders had to function, the “survival of the whole operation” — to build up the PVV — was at stake, according to him. “While Geert on his nights off was putting together a movie, the head of the UN interfered with it. Given the many incidents, it could have turned out quite differently,” Bosma says. The PVV, for example, feared a lawsuit, a ban on the party, and a major claim.

The owners of Brandos, a chain of Swedish shoe stores, are doing their part to combat racism and intolerance in Sweden. The two gentlemen have publicly informed anyone who voted for Sverigedemokraterna (the Sweden Democrats) that they are not welcome in Brandos stores.

…they say that SD-voters (340,000 persons) are not welcome as customers in their shops. What they neglected is that they have shops in several European countries where far more right-wing parties have got far more votes than the Sweden Democrats; countries where the immigration policy is far more restricted that the immigration policy in Sweden. These countries have in fact an immigration policy which is the one that the SD strive for.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

A major union for healthcare professionals in Sweden has said that it will not admit active members of the Sweden Democrats. The union says that the principles of the party — which opposes mass immigration and Islamization — are not compatible with the inclusive caring nature of its profession.

In other news, the Great War is finally over. Germany just paid off the last of the interest on bonds it issued decades ago when it resumed paying reparations under the Treaty of Versailles. Ninety-two years after the end of the war, the payment of reparations is finally complete.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

In one of his essays a couple of years ago, El Inglés coined the phrase “deranged altruism” to describe the apparently suicidal policies practiced by virtually all Western nations. Our countries have deliberately imported millions of inassimilable foreigners, many (or most) of whom are either criminal, or indolent, or both. The new residents are showered with uncountable billions of euros, pounds, kroner, francs, and dollars — an investment which can never possibly pay for itself, no matter how many generations we wait.

A close cultural cousin to deranged altruism is an impulse that might be labeled “toxic tolerance”. This is the imperative never to offend anyone, no matter how evil, duplicitous, or exploitative they might be. We are brought up to be nice at all costs, so that the impulse to be accommodating and generous to those who do not deserve it — even when it is patently dangerous to do so — is acted upon with almost no conscious deliberation. Muslims, with their long tradition of scripturally-prescribed dishonesty, are especially adept at manipulating and exploiting our toxic tolerance.

A selection of articles collected for tonight’s news feed reminded me of the two faces of toxic tolerance. The first group illustrates the decayed self-confidence and lack of guts displayed by Westerners when faced with the demands of the culture enrichers.

Denmark’s foreign minister on Wednesday met ambassadors of 17 Muslim countries ahead of the publication of a book on controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, the ministry said.

The meeting came five years after they were first published in a Danish daily.

Lene Espersen’s meeting with the ambassadors took place in a bid to defuse tensions with Muslim countries, a day before the fifth anniversary of the Jylland[s]-Posten newspaper’s publication of the cartoons that sparked outrage across the Muslim world.

[…]

The meeting was aimed at preventing new protests against Denmark and Danish interests over the publication on Thursday of the book written by Flemming Rose, who was Jyllands-Posten’s cultural editor when it published the 12 cartoons on September 30, 2005.

There’s no discussion of imposing draconian punishments on immigrant malefactors who violate public order, even though this policy would act as a means of prevention. There’s no possibility of consigning the violent punks to a cold concrete cell for decades and forcing them to subsist on weevil-ridden biscuits — not to mention deporting them at the first sign of insolent disorder.

The only available choice requires being nice, which involves — you guessed it! — “dialogue”, the favorite remedy of the terminally nice:

The radical Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir is holding a conference this coming Sunday in Denmark. It’s targeted at all Scandinavian Muslims, and the theme is “The Role of Muslims in the West”.

The promotional video below explains the nature of the conference, which aims to motivate Muslims who live in Western societies to become more politically engaged. You’ll notice that the organizers make no secret of their long-term intentions: their initial goal is to restore Khilafah, or the Caliphate, to majority Muslim countries, where rightful Islamic governance has been usurped by corrupt tyrants. After that Khilafah will be spread to the rest of the world — that is, the entire globe will convert to Islam and be coterminous with the Ummah.

Hizb ut-Tahrir exhorts Muslims not to assimilate, to forswear integration, and to resist the temptation to adopt decadent Western ways. Democracy is a corrupting influence which must be avoided and eventually eliminated.

As has often been pointed out in this space, Islam is not hiding its intentions or its methodology. It’s all laid out here where anyone can see it.

The imposition of sharia in the West is being accomplished through a variety of methods in a mixture of “carrot” and “stick” approaches. As the concentration of Muslims within any given area grows larger, the carrot tends to disappear and the stick becomes predominant.

In the early stages of Islamization, the carrots are subtle messages delivered by friendly, seemingly innocuous spokesmen like Imam Rauf. They appeal to Westerners’ sense of basic decency and tolerance, and gain concessions from people who have been trained above all else to be nice.

This is how halal food gets into the school system and municipal swimming pools decide to segregate the sexes.

The stick emerges when there are enough Muslims in the neighborhood to make trouble. Then the Islamic talking heads appear on television and tell us that although they personally abhor violence, when Muslims feel that Islam has been insulted, they tend to become angry. At that point some unspecified subset of them may react violently, and there really isn’t anything that more reasonable Muslims can do about it, unfortunately.

This is when free speech begins to be suppressed — newspapers and magazines self-censor, print editions of books are recalled and destroyed, and “Islamophobic” artists and writers are prosecuted under hate speech laws.

The final stage, which might appropriately be called the “Big Stick”, arrives when the Muslim population passes a local tipping point — generally a proportion of about 20% to 30%. At that point there are so many potentially violent and lawless “youths” available to assault, burn, loot, and rape, that law enforcement is unable to control them, and the rule of law disappears in Muslim-dominated enclaves.

This is how full sharia arrives in the West.

The “Big Stick” is already in operation in a number of Muslim ghettos in Western Europe. One of the most notorious such areas is the city of Malmö in southern Sweden, where certain neighborhoods — notably the Rosengård district — are off-limits to the forces of Swedish law and order.

The latest example of sharia in Malmö may be found in this news story from The Local, which describes how Malmö’s culture enrichers have threatened a judge into withdrawing from a criminal case. The enrichers no doubt feel themselves justified in their intimidation, since their actions — the pimping and rape of a 14-year-old retarded girl — do not constitute a crime under sharia law, and sharia is ascendant in Rosengård:

Threats Force Judge Out of Teen Pimping Trial

The presiding judge in the Malmö district court trial of ten men suspected of having sold a mentally handicapped 14-year-old girl for sex, has been forced to withdraw due to threats against her and her family.

Monica Nebelius, who was appointed to lead the proceedings when the trial of the ten men was due to start last week, was replaced by Björn Hansson when the trial eventually opened on Monday.

It was reported that Nebelius had been taken ill and would not be able to proceed with the assignment. But the judge has now confirmed that in fact it was threats directed against her which caused her to accede to police advice and withdraw.

“It was directed against both myself and my family. I can’t live at home at the moment,” Nebelius told the TT news agency.

Nebelius was unwilling to go into further detail over the threats, except to say that she is in receipt of continual updates from the police and hopes that she will be able to return to work at the district court as a soon as possible.

“I presume that I will be back at work as soon as possible. It is a just a question of getting going, there is no more to it than that,” she said.

Nebelius is not alone among those involved in the case who have been on the receiving end of threats. The prosecutor Ulrika Rogland has been assigned bodyguards.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

A major Islamic terrorist plot originating in Pakistan and aimed at various European cities has been disrupted by the joint efforts of the intelligence services of the USA, the UK, France, and Germany. The terrorists were planning a “Mumbai style” attack, but a number of the leaders of the group have been killed. It is not clear whether any alleged would-be perpetrators have been arrested.

In other news, Tonight Show host Jay Leno referred to Brian Cowen, the prime minister of Ireland, as a “drunken moron”. The epithet was prompted by a photo of the Taoiseach taken during an appearance on an early-morning Irish TV news program. It seems that Mr. Cowen had stayed up a bit late the night before, having — ahem — a good time. Although he may no longer have been drunk when the photo was taken, the camera did not catch him at his best. The incident is known in Ireland as “Garglegate”.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, DF, Freedom Fighter, Gaia, ICLA, Insubria, JD, McR, TB, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The Netherlands has been without a government for the last three months, ever since the general election which added fifteen seats to the Party for Freedom’s parliamentary presence. The vote also catapulted Geert Wilders to the position of kingmaker among the various establishment parties that have up until now continuously and publicly reviled him.

Three months without a government is a long time, but other countries in the same situation have gone on even longer. Iraq, for example, is still without a government seven months after a parliamentary election. And it seems like forever since Belgium had anything more than a caretaker government — I can’t even remember the last real government in Brussels (not counting the EU, of course).

And this current VVD/CDU coalition may not pan out — we have, after all, had previous false alarms. But if the left wing of the CDU doesn’t bolt again, this one may actually happen. Here’s the news from Reuters:

Dutch Agree Coalition With Anti-Islam Party Support

AMSTERDAM, Sept 28 (Reuters) — Two Dutch parties agreed on Tuesday to form a coalition, with support from a far-right party [the PVV] whose leader [Geert Wilders] is on trial for inciting hatred against Muslims, and its main task will be to implement austerity measures.

Notice that the PVV — which in an American context would be slightly to the left of, say, John Kerry on everything but immigration and Islam — is labeled “far-right”. Anybody who opposes Islamization, no matter how socialist he might be on other issues, is always called a “right-wing extremist”. If he happens also to use a phrase like “Dutch identity”, “Flemish rights”, “Swedish values”, or “the ancient liberties of Englishmen”, he is automatically promoted to the rank of “neo-fascist” or “crypto-Nazi”.

Below is the latest of an occasional series of essays by Anestos Canelides. The current piece concerns the barbaric Turkish institution of devshirme, which was practiced for centuries by the Ottomans against the conquered people of the Balkans.

Devshirme: A Muslim Scourge on Christiansby Anestos Canelides

We as a people, whether in Greece or the USA, should not forget our history, especially when it comes to Islam.

About year ago, in the name of political correctness Greek textbooks referred to the Ottoman occupation of the Greeks as the “Ottoman administration”. The reference was quickly retracted after a loud uproar from many Greeks, because the Ottoman interlude was much more than an administration, and the occupation brought upon the Christian Greeks centuries of cruel oppression.

One institution of such oppression practiced by the Turks was called Devshirme, or the practice of recruiting the best and brightest children, usually males, from Christian families, and forcing them to convert to Islam. These children were trained in the Sultan’s civil service, or they become part of an elite fighting force known as the Janissaries. From very inception of this institution the Christian population grievously resented the abduction of their children.

The great historian Leopold Von Ranke wrote that the first heroic song by Christos Melionis rang out throughout the mountains in Greece only after the traumatic practice of Devshirme was ended, and it was only long after it was over that it brought about revolt throughout the Balkans. 1

The Sultan inducted into his service children who had fallen into his hands either by purchase, or by outright abduction by recruiters from their families. Author Andre Gerolymatos writes about the barbaric practice of Devshirme in The Balkan Wars:

The cruel practice in what today can be called brain cleansing of the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire is perhaps the most inhuman Turkish legacy. The advantage gained by those chosen for conversion and a better life in Constantinople cannot militate against the odium of taking children away from their parents. 2

The Ottomans would send agents into villages to exact this tribute, thus depriving these villages of their strongest and most intelligent children, and making the Devshirme agents the most hated manifestation of Turkish rule. “The memory of these men continues to stigmatize the Turks in the Balkans.” 3

It is easy to understand the traumatic tone in surviving Greek literature from that period. For the parents this was a heartbreaking loss, and the complete transformation of their children, who were forced to turn away from their Christian faith, was devastating. The Tubingen manuscript written by Andre Argyros and John Tholoites in the 16th century vividly reveals the trauma that the parents went through.

You understand my lords and Christian gentlemen, what sorrow the Greeks bear, the fathers and mothers who are separated from their children at the prime of life. Think ye of the heart-rending sorrow! How many mothers scratch their out their cheeks! How many father beat their breasts with stones! What grief these Christians experience on account of their children who are separated from them while alive and how many mothers say, “It would be better to see them dead and buried in our church, rather than to take them alive in order to become Turks and abjure our faith. Better that you had died. 4

The sad fact is that while many Janissaries were Greek, their conversion and adherence to Islam forever severed them from any Hellenic consciousness or connection with Greek society. 5 The Christian population throughout the Balkans, resented the recruitment of the children and it was often carried out by force. Those who would not submit and surrender the most healthiest, the most handsome, and the most intelligent children faced stiff penalties. Parents who refused were immediately put to death by hanging.

The video below is a report from French television about Tower Hamlets, the EDL, and the Islamization of England. It’s a bit frustrating to watch, because the original English audio has been mostly damped down and overridden by the French voice-over. However, it has English subtitles, and is still well worth watching.

Pay special attention to the imam who will decide the young mother’s petition for a divorce:

Sergei Bourachaga returns with a follow-up to his earlier article about the Koran’s hate speech, extending his argument to take in the legal case against Geert Wilders.

Geert Wilders and the Koran on Trialby Sergei Bourachaga

In early October 2010, the Dutch Ministry of Justice will move ahead with the prosecution of Geert Wilders, a democratically elected member of Parliament who leads the most popular opposition party in the Netherlands. By now it is very clear to all those who followed the chronological development of this “kangaroo-type” prosecution that the Dutch government is not motivated by a quest for justice, but by an overzealous drive to silence what is politically incorrect to express in public, even if it is rooted in scientifically observed, measured, and validated facts. In other words, prosecutors have been instructed to sever the head of a very vocal person and display it in a highly visible place, as a reminder of the price every person in the kingdom has to pay for refusing to tolerate Islamic intolerance of Western values.

Proposing to contain Islamic radicalism in the Netherlands by putting an end to non-Western immigration.

Let us dissect piece by piece the previous statements, starting with the movie Fitna (an Arabic word for strife). The film documents acts of Islamic terrorism that bloodied the streets of New York (9/11), London, Madrid, etc… The movie also shows Muslim demonstrators in a variety of different countries holding up placards saying “God bless Hitler”. It depicts as well the beheading of a white Caucasian man by a bunch of Muslim terrorists dressed in black reciting verses from the Koran. Near the film’s end the following message appears: “The government insists that you respect Islam, but Islam has no respect for you. Islam wants to rule, submit, and seeks to destroy our Western civilization…”.

Muslim groups immediately sought judicial orders to prevent the release of the movie on the ground that “the film violates the European Union’s hate speech laws”. Muslim intimidation managed to coerce several interested parties into refraining from releasing Fitna, but eventually decision-makers for several internet service providers released the movie, arguing that freedom of speech should not be silenced through brute force and intimidation.

To what degree are the claims made in the movie by Mr. Geert Wilders accurate, and how should the West deal with the hatred promoted by the Koran and the intimidations imposed on our media by Muslim militant groups and Islamic organizations functioning as charitable NGOs, benevolent cultural/religious associations?

Most of the arguments raised by Mr. Geert Wilders are based on criminal behaviours adopted by Muslim radicals who frequently quote verses from the Koran, to distinguish themselves from common criminals who do not have the luxury of hiding their heinous acts behind the justification that they were simply following the commands of Allah. The issue of accuracy related to the hatred promoted by the Koran against Jews and Christians (people of the book or Ahloul kitab in Arabic), has been extensively covered in this very forum under the title of The Koran: A “Holy Book” or Hate Literature? For the purposes of this article I will reproduce certain paragraphs to support with facts the claim that, if Fitna promotes Islamophobia (a concept that does not make sense from the medical viewpoint of psychiatry), the Koran promotes indiscriminate violence against Jews, Christians, and every infidel who refuses to adopt as a spiritual guide the book of the “Perfect Religion” — Islam.

Due to the fact that I live in Canada, and most of my research is focused on Islamic radicalism on the Canadian political landscape, I will often be using Canadian examples and evidence, but readers should keep in mind that the observations and conclusions apply to the entire North American continent and beyond (Europe).

The Dutch government classified the core message of the movie Fitna as a tool to promote Islamophobia and hatred publicly. Every Friday, in mosques (public gathering places for Muslims) all over the world Muslims listen to religious leaders using their main tool, the Koran, to casually promote hatred against the infidels of the West. The Koran incites hatred by demonizing and dehumanizing Christians and Jews. Because of time and space restraints, I will use only a few verses from hundreds disseminated by the Prophet Mohamed through the pages of “The Noble Book”, representing the clear instructions of Allah to all those seeking an eternal life in his heavenly kingdom.

“Know that we send down to the unbelievers (Jews and Christians) Devils who incite them to evil. Therefore have patience: their days are numbered.” Koran 19:87 (a verse that demonizes victims of Islamic violence by insisting that the devil spreads chaos in this world through Jews and Christians).

Monday, September 27, 2010

Iran and Iraq — normally not on the most cordial of terms with each other — joined forces over the weekend to battle Kurdish rebels inside Iraq. The Kurds in question are Iranian, but are based in Iraq. At least thirty were reported to have been killed.

In other news, the United States government is attempting to ramp up its “wiretapping” powers to include internet communications that are not covered by current federal wiretapping rules. New targeted media would include BlackBerry, Facebook, and Skype, among others.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, CSP, DF, Gaia, Insubria, JD, KGS, Steen, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The article below is from the September 22nd edition of Jyllands-Posten (subscription required). It describes a Danish woman’s well-meaning but fruitless efforts to alleviate the problems caused by cultural enrichment in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen.

Michelle Hviid’s failure demonstrates that the standard leftist assumption concerning immigration — that integration is just a matter of showing good will and “openness” — crumbles with cruel results when attempted in the real world.

The woman described in the article is not particularly a public person — just a private individual who tried to do something active to deal with problems that others were only talking about, and expected that her friendliness and openness would be returned by the “poor excluded immigrants”.

Her experience shows that in spite of all the sweet talk and initial good impressions, reciprocity is not the usual the outcome — and in particular that immigrants are unable and/or unwilling to control what their children actually do.

Many thanks to Anne-Kit of Perth, Australia, for the translation:

Michelle’s Frustration

Integration: Michelle Hviid, 37, achieved nationwide fame four years ago when she created “Michelle’s Mission” — an integration project to encourage immigrants and native Danes to have dinner together. Now she is deeply frustrated at living in Nørrebro, one of North West Copenhagen’s ghetto areas.

This spring was the third time Michelle Hviid’s 12-year old son Benjamin was attacked by a gang of immigrant boys.

He and a friend were on their way home from school and were walking up Nørrebrogade [major thoroughfare] when 12-14 immigrant boys began circling them. Benjamin had seen a couple of the boys previously at a Tae Kwon Do club.

The group of immigrant boys managed to separate Benjamin and his friend so that each boy was surrounded by 6-7 immigrants. They started pushing the two Danish boys between them as if they were balls in a game. Slowly the boys were forced out onto the street. The traffic stopped and Benjamin made eye contact with some of the cyclists and drivers, silently pleading for help while being pushed around. No one came to his aid.

His friend was hit and kicked so severely that he ended up at the hospital emergency room. Benjamin escaped onto a bus, but his assailants followed. He had to jump off the bus and seek refuge in a shop before anyone helped him.

Crumbling faith

Benjamin has been attacked twice before by different immigrant boys in Nørrebro — the first time he was 10 years old, the second he was 11. In both cases the attackers were local immigrant boys. Now he takes a massive detour to avoid certain streets when riding his bike to and from school.

His mother, Michelle Hviid, lives with her husband and children on Thoravej in Copenhagen’s North West where they own their own apartment close to several ghetto areas. She is deeply frustrated about the attacks on her son. It has caused her faith in integration to crumble.

In 2006 she sought to make a contribution towards integration by trying to get 1,500 Danes and 1,500 immigrants together to share a meal. Danmarks Radio [State TV] ran five programs covering “Michelle’s Mission”, which created a lot of attention.

It proved easy to get Danes to take part but only 513 immigrants turned up.

The political doctrine of Multiculturalism enjoys its current supremacy due to the confluence of commercial interests and those of the transnational governing oligarchy.

Large corporations — call them “corporatists” rather than “capitalists”, since capitalism as it is generally understood is not what they practice — benefit from cheap immigrant labor and from the downward push on regional wage rates caused by the influx of poor immigrants to wealthier countries.

The transnational oligarchy benefit from the shifting and churning of populations, which tends to dilute national identities and atomize the population. This makes central political control easier and less accountable, and the practice of forced ethnic heterogeneity provides the oligarchs with further incentives to erase formal national borders. The long-term goal is to replace the nation-state with supranational entities such as the EU, the UN, and various regional subgroups. This much- ballyhooed process is currently in vogue as “global governance”, made urgently necessary by the looming disaster of “climate change”.

Both the oligarchs and the corporatists have a vested interest in weakening the middle and lower-middle classes, since these provide the breeding grounds for political awareness and resistance to their rule. Mass immigration is the most useful tool available to accomplish this purpose, which is why it is pushed so relentlessly in the face of public opposition by the oligarchs and their allies in media and the academy.

Behind it all there is, of course, a corpus of true believers. Not everyone is a cynic, and there are many sincere communicants at the altar of Multiculturalism. I remember them from when I was a kid — they got all starry-eyed over UNICEF and the Peace Corps and exotic foreigners in quaint costumes. Later on, in the seventies and eighties, they celebrated diversity from positions of influence in government, the media, the universities, the charitable foundations, and private corporations. These well-meaning busybodies eventually delivered to us the culturally enriched rainbow tapestry that almost all Westerners are forced to endure today.

Somehow all of this occurred without the consent or approval of the vast majority of the people whose lives it so grievously affects. And now that a large proportion of the populace has awakened to what has been inflicted upon them, the essential question emerges: What can be done to halt and then reverse the multicultural juggernaut?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Our Austrian correspondent AMT sends the following essay concerning the experience of ordinary Austrian parents with the much-touted advantages of Multiculturalism in primary education.

The Joys of a Multicultural Educationby AMT

There is cultural enrichment and there is Cultural Enrichment. To explain this, my friend told me the following story:

Vienna is the city of multiculturalism in the old, positive sense. It was a melting pot, heartily inviting those who wanted to settle in this city in order to work, enrich it — again, in the old meaning of the word — and a great majority of them did. “They” being Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Hungarians, refugees from neighboring countries when Communism was at its most threatening. The war in Balkans altered this enrichment dramatically: in the 1990s, the face of Vienna started to change. It wasn’t yet noticeable except by the most watchful people. And this is when Cultural Enrichment began. Crime rates roared, as did rape rates and “honor” murders.

My friend told me this story because her daughter, Marie, started first grade a couple of weeks ago. Marie cannot attend the public school near her house ever since her mother — on her way out from the voting booth located in a first grade classroom — saw that school children were taught Arabic. As a result, Marie’s parents chose a nearby Catholic school, which charges a hefty €145 a month, but which, according to the headmistress, does not accept non-Christians, with miniscule exceptions made for atheists.

Imagine my friend’s surprise when on the first day of school she heard the names of Marie’s classmates during roll call. Imagine also her surprise when she heard some of the parents talking with their children. The languages she heard included English, French, and Dutch. Henry’s parents are from Connecticut; Viktoria’s mom is from Texas, her father from Germany; Lily’s parents are Dutch. This is what she calls enriching: Viktoria is sitting next to Marie, thus allowing Marie to practice her English. Viktoria’s German is flawless. And this is what separates cultural enrichment from Cultural Enrichment: some these kids may be considered “immigrants”, but they speak the local language, as do their parents, and this allows the teacher to teach the curriculum without any “language” problems.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

It appears that the early indications are correct, and the Stuxnet computer virus is specifically targeted at high-value assets in Iran’s nuclear program, especially at Bushehr. The Iranians consider it to be tantamount to an act of war.

In other news, metrosexual British men are increasingly availing themselves of makeup products that are normally used by women, such as “guyliner” and “manscara”.

Thanks to 4symbols, C. Cantoni, DF, Freedom Fighter, Gaia, Insubria, JD, KGS, SH, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Below is an interview with Cas Mudde that aired this afternoon on Swedish state media. Dr. Mudde is Dutch expert on right-wing parties, and he argues that the Sweden Democrats’ recent success was only to be expected.

23 Jun 2010… Cas Mudde is Nancy Schaenen scholar at The Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics and visiting associate professor at the department of political science of DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Among his books is Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (Cambridge University Press)

The brouhaha over the proposed Ground Zero mosque occupies most of the column inches, but that doesn’t mean that other less notorious Muslim Brotherhood real estate ventures aren’t of equal (or greater) consequence to New York City and the rest of the country.

Wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen are quietly and continuously establishing partnerships and joint ventures in the United States to launch ambitious building projects of all kinds. Some of them — the Islamic centers and mosques — are directly related to Islamic da’wa, or proselytization. Others are simply lucrative, and serve the Muslim Brotherhood more indirectly by being profitable. Funneling money back to the sheikhs in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates is also useful to the Great Jihad.

Regular GoV reader Heroyalwhyness did a little digging and collected some information about the Muslim building boom in New York City. Much of the information below is derived from the SkyscraperPage forum. She sent this in a while ago, but I just got around to organizing and formatting it.

Heroyalwhyness says:

I don’t have anything concrete (pun intended)… but here are some dots — culled from construction blogs and financial papers to consider and explore further. We know Mayor Bloomberg is expanding his financial arm into sharia compliant finance, as is Carnegie.

1.

Imam Rauf and Daisy are planning to be in Abu Dhabi, September 2, 2010 (on our dime)

2.

Aabar Investment, a company controlled by the Abu Dhabi Government, is helping fund the development of a 73-story luxury apartment building and hotel in New York City, across the street from Carnegie Hall…higher than the three tallest skyscrapers within the area: Carnegie Hill Tower, the Metropolitan Tower, and CitiSpire… incidentally named “Carnegie 57” constructed by Extell, run by Gary Barnett

These are probably the same foreign men that Matt and Shvo were entertaining at Bagatelle a few months ago — supposedly they spent $90,000 on champagne at a brunch there with a group of Arabian looking men. Looks like it is paying off now that they’ve got these guys buying their units for $2,000 a foot. link

Aabar Investment, a company controlled by the Abu Dhabi government, has paid Extell for a majority stake in the project, and the deal could be the “start of several property projects in New York” from the Middle Easterners. The Essex House right behind the vacant lot is owned by Dubai’s Jumeirah, so maybe this neighborhood should now be called the Emirate?

As has often been discussed in this blog, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is the worldwide clearinghouse for political Islam. This makes the OIC the linchpin of the Ummah, and thus the enabler and promoter of the Great Jihad. More than any other Islamic entity, the OIC merits the closest scrutiny of the Counterjihad.

In an article today in The American Thinker, Bat Ye’or has composed a succinct summary of the history, mission, and significance of the OIC. She begins with this overview:

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is a religious and political organization. Close to the Muslim World League of the Muslim Brotherhood, it shares the Brotherhood’s strategic and cultural vision: that of a universal religious community, the Ummah, based upon the Koran, the Sunna, and the canonical orthodoxy of shari’a. The OIC represents 56 countries and the Palestinian Authority (considered a state), the whole constituting the universal Ummah with a community of more than one billion three to six hundred million Muslims.

The OIC has a unique structure among nations and human societies. The Vatican and the various churches are de facto devoid of political power, even if they take part in politics, because in Christianity, as in Judaism, the religious and political functions have to be separated. Asian religions, too, do not represent systems that bring together religion, strategy, politics, and law within a single organizational structure.

Not only does the OIC enjoy unlimited power through the union and cohesion of all its bodies, but also to this it adds the infallibility conferred by religion. Bringing together 56 countries, including some of the richest in the world, it controls the lion’s share of global energy resources. The European Union (EU), far from anticipating the problems caused by such a concentration of power and investing in the diversification and autonomy of energy sources since 1973, acted to weaken America internationally in order to substitute for it the U.N., the OIC’s docile agent. In the hope of garnering a few crumbs of influence, the EU privileged a massive Muslim immigration into Europe, paid billions to the Mediterranean Union and Palestinian Authority, weakened the European states, undermined their unity, and wrapped itself in the flag of Palestinian justice, as though this would supply some protective system against the global jihad, which it endeavored to focus on Israel.

Ms. Ye’or also points out what has often been noted here: the OIC is the nascent Caliphate, ready to re-establish what was abolished in 1924. It’s also obvious that Turkey is lining up for the privilege of hosting the new Caliph, thus re-establishing the Ottoman Empire at the same time.

By characterizing Muslim violence all over the world as “legitimate resistance”, the OIC supports jihad against non-Muslims in its various manifestations. This is a logical extension of the OIC’s assertion that its mandate extends to all Muslims, including those who form a minority within non-Muslim countries.

This extraterritorial ambition — to influence legal and political doings in countries where such matters are none of its business — is characteristic of political Islam. In this enterprise the OIC is aided and abetted by cowardly Western leaders, who are only too willing to grant the concessions sought by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

New Zealand’s Building Minister, Mr. Maurice Williamson, got himself into a bit of hot water by telling a couple of politically incorrect jokes referring to Islam. New Zealand’s Federation of Islamic Associations has written a letter to the prime minister demanding an apology from Mr. Williamson.

The news story posted below does not include the jokes themselves, but I was fortunately able to obtain them through samizdat channels:

1.

“What is the difference between Muslims and Kiwis? Muslims get to commit adultery and get stoned, Kiwis get stoned and commit adultery!”

2.

Mr. Williamson also quipped about the weather being “Shi’ite in the morning and Sunni in the afternoon.”

In other news, Senator John Kerry said that the reasons the Democrats are having so much trouble against the Republicans in this fall’s election is that the voters are stupid and have short attention spans. OK, so he didn’t use those exact words — but read it; you’ll see that’s essentially what he said. That can’t help but improve his party’s chances at the polls.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, DF, ESW, Gaia, GB, JD, Kitman, Nilk, Reinhard, RRW, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Below is the latest in an occasional series of essays by our Russian correspondent Dimitri K.

The Story of Two Revolutionsby Dimitri K.

Suddenly he made a faceAs if his mouth burned.The officer noticedMy large red-skinned passport...

I take it out of my trousersLike a copy of the priceless itemLook — I am a citizenOf the Soviet Union

— Vladimir Mayakovsky

In this short essay I would like to compare two revolutions, the consequences of which I observed during my lifetime. One was the Socialist Revolution in Russia, that occurred in October 1917. Please notice that half a year before that, in February 1917 a Democratic revolution occurred in Russia, so by that time Russia was already a democratic republic governed by the elected parliament. Of that revolution I know a lot, mostly because it was studied in Soviet schools, and also from my grandparents, who observed it in person. That revolution officially finished in 1992 with the collapse of the Soviet union, so it lasted for seventy-five years.

The other revolution, which has not finished yet, is the Sexual Revolution of the sixties in the West. Of that revolution I know less, but its consequences can be observed throughout the world, and are still here. That revolution was not solely sexual, just as the Socialist Revolution in Russia was not only or exactly about Socialism. However, if people ever use the word “revolution” with respect to the events of the sixties, they usually talk about sexual revolution.

There must be some reason for that. It’s probably because sexual norms were transformed the most radically. Some like to argue that it was about equality and freedom of women; similar arguments were often presented for the Russian Revolution. However, just like in Russia in 1917, the formal equality of sexes and personal freedom were already in place at the time of the revolution.

There are many similar features in the two events. I heard from my grandmother that in the 1920s in Moscow she saw demonstrations of naked people, walking in the streets with signs that read “No more shame!”. And in the USA, the 1960s were the time of the struggle for social rights as well.

For this essay I chose as the epigraph a few lines from Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem “The Poem of Soviet Passport”, translated by myself. Mayakovsky was a great revolutionary poet both in the sense of his poetical form and also because he praised the Russian Revolution. Later he became disillusioned with revolution, and in 1930 he shot himself.

This poem was studied in Soviet schools, and as a child I thought it was about the greatness of the Soviet Union. Later I started to suspect that it was actually about something else, though most people around me still cannot believe it. The reason for our misunderstanding was actually because we grew up in a completely different time than Mayakovsky did. He saw the beginning of the revolution, we witnessed the end.

AG is a Gates of Vienna reader who lives in southern Norway. In response to yesterday’s post about the systematic assault and rape of Western women activists, he sends an account of his own experiences, plus some news articles on the topic:

I’m a Norwegian Army veteran who has served in the Middle East, the Balkans, etc. I would like to tell you of a documented rape case in connection with your recent post “Peace Through Rape”.

This story was published by the largest Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten, on 20 July. The information is obviously taken from an article on the website Ynet.com. Below I have provided the Ynet article plus a direct translation of the Aftenposten article. The grammar and structure of the Aftenposten piece is poor, even in Norwegian, but very symptomatic of the current standards of the MSM.

Notice how the Aftenposten article omits the fact that the victim was stalked and staked out before the crime. Instead the story is given a spin to emphasize how random this act was. Nothing to see here, just a horrible and random human tragedy. The communication advisor also obviously feels the need to emphasize that this was purely a random act.

It is further worth noticing that the woman was “on loan” from Flyktninghjelpen (The Refugee Aid), a Norwegian quasi-NGO with 2600 employees in 20 countries, funded more or less completely by the Norwegian government. While the work for UNICEF was pro bono, my guess is that she was still receiving a salary from Flyktninghjelpen. If so, the pro bono work was not so much on her own behalf, but rather indirectly for the Norwegian government. This is only my speculation, however.

This emerging story on how the Left is sacrificing their own women for “the cause” is maybe the case that will crush the moral image of both the Palestinian Movement and the Left in the western world for good - given that many more of these cases emerge into the public spotlight.

I have no doubt that the scale of this is considerable. When I served with UNIFIL in Lebanon twelve years ago, a friend I had gained among the locals -- a Sunni Muslim -- told me the story of how he had lost his virginity. Together with one of his buddies, he tricked a girl from a different village to drink a soda spiked with drugs. When the drugs took effect, the two of them had their way with her in the back of a van. While I was appalled by this story, he himself was quite proud over how clever and cunning he had been. He considered the whole story amusing.

If they behave like this against their own, then there will hardly be any mercy shown to outsiders. At the time I heard this story, I also heard stories for the first time of how playboys of the Saudi royal family used their diplomatic immunity to bring Western women – party girls, models and callgirls - into Saudi Arabia on their private jets. Once arrived, they became what they where intended to be -- slaves -- and disappeared from the world. I believe Soldier of Fortune magazine has written articles on this subject.

The scale of this enslavement of Western women in the Muslim world is probably much, much larger than just a few isolated cases -- and if so, a very potent weapon for exposing the moral void of both Islam and Marxism at once.

I was quite surprised when Aftenposten printed this story, because the journalist responsible for Middle East coverage -- Lars Akerhaug -- is a hardline revolutionary Marxist. He is not only a member of the the Norwegian Communist Party, he has been their international secretary. He has also been a board member of The Commitee for a Free Iraq, which was founded after the US invasion. His editor is the former party chairman of the same party, and many of their collegues have similar backgrounds. When Aftenposten lets a story like this pass through the filter of silence and censorship, it is probably an indication of a growing problem.

Our German translator JLH just sent us a translation, along with the following note:

Coincidental to your post “Peace through Rape” I happened a few days ago to follow a lead from Politically Incorrect to this article about Alice Schwarzer, who is one of the premier feminists in Germany, a well-known leade of the New German Feminist Movement, and the founder in 1972 of the magazine EMMA.

I think of this as “Memo to NOW: not all feminists are left-wing drones.”

Essen. The politically correct dancing around with the dangers of Islam seems to get on Alice Schwarzer’s nerves. On September 23rd, she is bringing out an angry and rousing book with the title “The Great Cover-Up (Veiling) — For Integration, against Islamism” (Kiepenhauer & Witsch, 272 pages, €9.95) with essays by her and other EMMA authors.

For over thirty years, she says, out of false tolerance people in the West have turned a blind eye to the atrocities in the name of Islam. After the fall of the shah, she herself had spoken with representatives of the Khomeini regime in Iran. With a cold smile, they had said that sharia would be introduced with stoning for homosexuality or a wife’s adultery. “No, the Islamists made no secret of their attentions. No more than the National Socialists,” she says.

Islamic agitators, often trained in Iran, Afghanistan or Egypt and financed in Saudi Arabia have been very good, she says, at disguising their true motives. Today, it is considerably more difficult to distinguish between Islam as a religion and political Islam.

Friday, September 24, 2010

There is a large selection of news stories tonight from the UK, and about half of them concern the growing epidemic of “yobs” in British public spaces. Yob (or yobbo) is a colloquial term for someone who engages in anti-social behavior, often accompanied by violence, and usually under the influence of alcohol. There is a public perception that the situation is out of control, and that the police are unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

In other news, Saudi Arabia has announced that it plans to require everyone who runs a website or blog to obtain a license from the government. The stated reason for the move is to reduce online libel and defamation.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Last night our Flemish correspondent VH translated a summary of a discussion among four Dutch legal scholars about the need to acquit Geert Wilders of the hate speech charges against him. Tonight, as a follow-up, he has translated a much lengthier report on the same meeting from DePers:

This prosecution does not befit a civilized country

Wilders case: “There must be a response to Wilders. Just not with criminal law.”

by Kustaw Bessems

What Geert Wilders evokes may be rancid, ugly, ridiculous, offensive or immoral. Yet he must be acquitted, as four lawyers emphatically argue.

Here in the last century, was the Restaurant Royal. Here Queen Wilhelmina ordered her rice with Thymus vulgaris for lunch. And for a while the Cabinet came to eat here. According to the plaque on the facade of the building, Constantijn Huygens — poet, composer, and secretary of the Princes of Orange, lived here for a few years in the early seventeenth century. After him the regents and foreign noblemen came and went.

The focal point of politics is still nearby, at the Binnenhof [Parliament buildings] and het Plein [office of the PM]. But here, at the Lange Voorhout no. 44, The Hague, scholars have the last word: the Leiden University’s the Hague Campus is located here. And in the dark wood-paneled stile-room, four professors gather for a conversation about the trial of one of the most important politicians of the moment. About a charge of [presumed — translator] insulting Muslims, incitement to discrimination, and inciting hatred. A conversation about the Wilders case.

“I am here because I think it is disastrous that this prosecution is taking place,” Theo de Roos says, Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at the University of Tilburg.

“I was a consultant to the Public Ministry (Openbaar Ministerie, OM), but now I emerge on the side of the defense. I want to explain that,” says Henny Sackers, administrative sanction law professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen.

“We are not an extension of Geert Wilders, assures De Roos.

“Oh no, not at all!”, Sackers joins in.

Seated at the table with them are Tom Zwart and Afshin Ellian. Zwart is Professor of Human Rights at Utrecht University. Ellian is a lawyer and professor of social cohesion, citizenship and multiculturalism at Leiden University.

The four men know each other, from the university circuit. They meet each other. “But only recently have we got together for the first time. This combination is established especially for the Wilders case.”

Why? Because they all four are deeply convinced that Geert Wilders should never have been prosecuted for his remarks on the Islam, Muslims and immigrants.

They nod.

And because all four of them find — now that it has come so far — that the court must acquit Wilders.

Most people are familiar with the tragic case of Rachel Corrie, an American “peace activist” who was backed over by an Israeli bulldozer and killed when she was in the Gaza Strip acting as a human shield against the destruction of Palestinian houses.

As several photos of Ms. Corrie reveal, she not only sported the keffiyeh — a length of cloth with a distinctive pattern representing “Palestine”, and worn as a neckerchief or other trendy accessory by leftists — she also veiled herself in the hijab, Muslim-style.

This always made me wonder about the back-story of Ms. Corrie’s involvement with Palestinian “peace” activism. When you see a woman wearing hijab in a Muslim context, it’s not only signal that she is an observant Muslima, obeying the strictures of Islamic law concerning the modesty of women. It also indicates that she is the property of a man — her husband, brother, father, son, or other male relative. An uncovered woman is a “whore”, fair game for the first man who happens upon her. A covered woman is protected from such assaults, but only because access to her is guarded and controlled by a man recognized under sharia as her legal keeper.

Chances are that when Rachel Corrie arrived in the territories, whether she slapped on a hijab or not, she was fairly quickly acquired by a local strongman in the area she chose for her “protest”. She would have been considered an especially choice target, being young, not unattractive, and blonde — all characteristics that rich Arabs are willing to pay good money for.

All of the above must remain mere speculation, since Rachel Corrie will never be able to reach a wiser maturity and write her memoirs about what really happened to her. However, from the following article in Arutz Sheva, we catch a glimpse of what befalls young naïve “peace activists” of a similar stripe when they arrive in the territories:

Arabs Harass Female ‘Peace’ Activists; Left Silences Victims

Two activists have exposed a disturbing phenomenon that they say is an open secret within the “peace camp”: female “peace” activists are routinely harassed and raped by the Arabs of Judea and Samaria with whom they have come to identify. They say the phenomenon has gotten worse lately and that many foreign women end up as wives of local Arabs against their will, but cannot escape their new homes.

“A nauseous atrocity has been going on for a long time behind the scenes at the leftists’ demonstration at Bil’in, Naalin and Sheikh Jarrah [Shimon HaTzaddik],” she writes. “A dark secret that threatens to smash the basic ideological values upon which the demand to end the occupation of the Territories rests.”

Now, why has this remained a “dark secret”? There are numerous witnesses to what goes on in “Palestine”, and not just Muslims or other young women in a similar bind. In the photos taken immediately after the accident that killed Rachel Corrie, you can see young Western men crouching over Ms. Corrie’s prostrate form. There are plenty of Western useful idiot males in the Palestinian environment who could blow the whistle on the “dark secret”, if they had a mind to.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Four more suspects have been arrested in the northern English town of Gateshead on suspicion of viewing a video showing the burning of a Koran. This makes a total of six who have been detained so far for this heinous crime.

In contrast, a judge in East Lansing, Michigan, has refused to consider a charge against the man who left charred pages of the Koran on the front steps of a mosque. The judge says that no one was threatened by the act, since the man who did the burning was the only one present at the time. He also says that he can find no crime that was committed under Michigan law, and that the First Amendment protects the right to burn a Koran, just as it does the burning of a U.S. flag.

In other news, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran gave a speech at the United Nations in which he asserted that 9-11 was an inside job by the United States to revive its flagging economy and help out the Zionist Entity. Representatives of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and all 27 members of the EU walked out of the speech. Strangely enough, the Zionist Entity was not listed among the offended delegations. Perhaps it had not been invited to attend.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Yunus Effendi Habibie, the Indonesian ambassador to the Netherlands, caused a bit of a kerfuffle recently when he indicated that voters who preferred Geert Wilders’ party might in fact be psychotic. He and the government he represents have taken offense in the last few months over the less than complimentary things Mr. Wilders has said about Islam.

The PVV responded by demanding that the Foreign Ministry have a little talk with the ambassador to set him straight. Since the proposed new government is dependent on the support of the PVV in its formation, the ministry complied surprisingly quickly with Mr. Wilders’ demand.

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated a series of five articles, beginning with the original interview with Ambassador Habibie published in Het Financieele Dagblad:

Indonesian Ambassador: “I do not want my president to be put down as a clown here”

by Alexander Weissink

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will pay a state visit to the Netherlands from October 6 to 9, 2010. “Relations are super-smooth, but the circumstances are not that pretty,” the Indonesian ambassador Yunus Effendi Habibie [brother of former President of Indonesia (1998-99) Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie] said.

Would the possible support of the PVV for a new cabinet stand in the way of a visit by the Indonesian President?

“The president had already promised to visit the Netherlands, before it was clear what [coalition] government was being formed. He is ‘a man a man, a word a word’. But the circumstances are not that nice. If Mr. Wilders had become part of a new government, the upcoming state visit might have been very doubtful. The president of course will not come over when there is someone in the government here [the Netherlands] who calls the Islam backward. I do not want my president to be put down as a clown here.

Will the support of the PVV for a Dutch [coalition] government influence the relations with Indonesia?

“I see no reason why we cannot cooperate, unless the Dutch Government implements an anti-Islamic policy. If Mr. Wilders remains outside the government, he may shout whatever he wants. As long as he stays barking outside the cabinet. Why would we mess up our relations because of this one man? Incidentally, I observe hate speech in his words. Moreover, my uncle, was repeatedly thrown into jail by the Dutch because of sowing hatred against the Dutch colonizer, but put that to the side.

If you offend someone, you ask for a response. If Mr. Wilders calls Islam barbaric and backward, maybe he has to learn more about Islam. That in Baghdad there was already a medical school when here in the Netherlands there were still only quacks wandering around. I will not lecture him, as long as he doesn’t have influence on Dutch policy.“

Does the growing influence of the Party for Freedom already have an effect on bilateral relations?

“Relations are being disturbed by the presence of Mr. Wilders. I’m annoyed with what he says. It distorts economic and political relations. I’ve always argued for the Netherlands in Jakarta, but that becomes ever more difficult. We will and should not interfere in the internal Dutch affairs, but of course we do follow the developments closely. If Mr. Wilders forces the government to implement his ideas, our relationship will be put under pressure. When government policy leads to insulting Islam, then we have a problem. If Indonesians cannot come to the Netherlands because Indonesia is an Islamic country, we have a problem. Indonesia however, will never become an Islamic state, even though 85% of our population is Muslim. The Pancasila [the philosophical foundation of the Indonesian state, that was actually formed by the Dutch from a variety of islands — translator] guarantees equal rights and equal responsibilities for all.”

What conclusion do you draw from the growing popularity of Geert Wilders and the PVV?

“It is a fact that many people voted for Mr. Wilders. When people want to listen to him, that’s their good right. Maybe they suffer from a fear psychosis. But they will have to realize that the hegemony is not of the Christians. The world is getting ever smaller and we are sitting closer and closer to one another. Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. There are radicals and terrorists in all religions. You may not judge more than a billion people based on a thousand or so extremists. When you suffer from criminal Moroccans, just pick them up. Those aren’t good Muslims. They blacken our name. Ultimately, I believe the Dutch people know what’s good for them. We will continue to build on our relationship in good faith, but I don’t think my president wants to meet Mr. Wilders. “

Why does the state visit takes place at this time?

“The last obstacle to our relations was removed when the Dutch foreign minister Bernard Bot came over to Jakarta in 2005 and accepted our Independence Day, August 17, 1945. We never asked for that recognition, but it was always a psychological barrier that hindered our relationship. Since then our relations are super-smooth, and we can go hand-in-hand towards the future. Actually, the president wanted to visit the Netherlands sooner, but could not do this because Garuda [Indonesian airline] was banned from flying to Europe six years ago by the European Commission. He of course will not go [to the Netherlands] on KLM or Singapore Airlines. No way. The Netherlands then helped us greatly with solving the shortcomings of Garuda. The [Dutch] Ministry of Transport sent experts to Jakarta. Since June there have been daily flights again between Jakarta and Amsterdam.”

Will this state visit further improve the ties between Indonesia and the Netherlands?

“The president will sign a comprehensive partnership. With that our relations will be underlined and legalized. This should further facilitate political and business relationships. It lays the foundation for all kinds of agreements such as a treaty to eliminate double taxation. We want to expand our current position and make use of the Netherlands as our gateway to Europe.”

Below is a news report from German television about the forced marriages and domestic violence that are a normal part of the parallel Turkish society in Neuköln. Many thanks to Hans Erling Jensen for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitles:

The four professors (left to right): Ellian, Zwart, Sackers and De Roos (image printscreen De Pers)

The trial of Geert Wilders is about to reconvene, and although the proceedings are pre-cooked — “railroading” is probably too mild a term for what is being done to Mr. Wilders — some of the most prominent legal scholars in the Netherlands have spoken out against the case.

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article on the topic from Elsevier:

Law scholars want Geert Wilders acquitted

Four law scholars are strongly opposed to the prosecution Geert Wilders being prosecuted for hate speech. Thus, in their opinion, the PVV leader must be acquitted. “This prosecution does not befit a civilized country.”

So says Tom Zwart, Professor of Human Rights at the Utrecht University, in an interview with the free newspaper De Pers.

Acquittal

Tom Zwart is backed by three other law scholars: Theo de Roos, Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at the University of Tilburg; Henny Sackers, Professor of Administrative Sanctions Law at Radboud University in Nijmegen, and Elsevier blogger Afshin Ellian, Professor of Social Cohesion, Citizenship and Multiculturalism at the Leiden University.

The four professors believe that the prosecution should never have taken place, and plead — now that he has to appear in court — for acquittal. The trial against Wilders will resume next month.

PVV voters

Theo de Roos: “What I have a big problem with is that the ruling of the Court does not judge the one-liners of Wilders in their context. If you do, you can see he has a consistent story about protecting Dutch culture against Islam. You may find that evil or ridiculous, but it is a contribution to the public debate. “

“What do you say now with those proceedings to all those people who voted for the PVV? Actually you say they must also be put behind bars,” Tom Zwart says.

It can’t be repeated too often that Muslim men establish dominance over infidel women (or any women not protected by other Muslim men) through rape. In a traditional context, captive non-Muslim women are raped, and then either consigned to slavery or forcibly converted to Islam and married to their rapist.

As is often noted, political Islam — which is sometimes referred to as “radical Islam” or “Islamism” — is a totalitarian ideology. All four schools of Sunni Islamic law, along with Shi’a jurisprudence, affirm the orthodox political interpretations of the Koran and the hadith that justify the establishment of an all-powerful theocratic state by any and all means. These interpretations of Islam’s core scriptures are validated by traditional doctrine as taught by scholars at all major Islamic universities, especially the most prestigious of them all, al-Azhar University in Cairo.

For these reasons we may assert that Islam is inherently totalitarian. Muslims themselves may or may not have totalitarian tendencies — it’s certainly true that many millions of Muslims, whether they really believe in their religion or not, are politically apathetic and indifferent to any practical political application of their creed. But official Islamic doctrine promotes a totalitarian political philosophy.

Westerners who long for a “reform” of Islam — which they imagine will somehow purge Islamic theology of its violent tendencies — fail to realize that a reform is already well underway. The latest wave began in 1928 in Egypt with the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood by Hassan al-Banna, and it continues to this day. Followers of al-Banna have returned to the core scriptures of Islam and studied the life and sayings of Mohammed. They take what is written in these texts and commentary seriously, and are thus driven to implement various totalitarian political practices, through violent means or otherwise.

The residual influence of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia on Islamism may be seen precisely in the assimilated features of the counterintelligence state absorbed by both radical Islamic movements and radical Islamic regimes: the multiplicity and redundancy of intelligence and counterintelligence services with counterintelligence being the preferred tendency; fixation with conspiracies and incessant conspiratorial intrigue; provocation and associated deception; conspiracy-laced propaganda and very sophisticated information warfare campaigns; draconian police state tactics, this time justified by theocratic strictures vice party dogma. In its drive to nuclear power status Iran, especially, has shown adeptness at deception in masking the weapons side of its program, and in information warfare and propaganda with its bombast of military prowess aimed at strong anti-war sentiment in the U.S.

Many Westerners had trouble grasping the nature of the U.S.S.R., and they are no better at understanding the workings of the Islamic counterintelligence state. Iran is a good example: we treat it as if it were a Western democracy, with a parliament (the Majlis) as a legislative authority, a judiciary (the mullahs and ayatollahs) and an executive (President Ahmadinejad). However, there is at best a superficial resemblance between these structures and their Western counterparts. Politics in Iran is conducted quite differently from what we are used to. It is opaque to us because its operations proceed according to the internal logic inherent to a counterintelligence state.

As a made-up example, imagine that three American charity workers in Iran are arrested and detained by the Revolutionary Guards, and then later charged with being spies for the CIA. We’ll assume for the sake of argument that they are not really CIA spies.

So what is Iran up to?

It may be quite difficult to determine the motives for such an arrest. If talks on Iran’s nuclear program are about to begin, the act may constitute the first move in the chess game of those negotiations. When backdoor discussions about the hostages are initiated, Iran may discreetly hint that a relaxation in the IAEA inspection regime might just result in the release of the captives.

Or the arrest may be some other international gambit in a complex game — an effort to influence Russia, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Saudi Arabia.

Or the real reason may be found within the internal politics of Iran itself. Political disagreement and maneuvering in a counterintelligence state generally proceed out of sight. Publicly staged political events simply ratify what has been decided by other means — that is, through the struggles between the factions that form the power structure of the state. In Iran, as in any other Third World country, Western hostages — particularly Americans — are very valuable. They function as a big bank deposit for the faction that holds them. Taking the three prisoners may well have given the Revolutionary Guards or their allies more leverage in ongoing internal factional struggles.

By the time the captives are released by a smiling Ahmadinejad during a carefully staged photo op, the political issues of their capture have already been settled. The tearful erstwhile prisoners thank the president for his gracious help, the cameras and the journalists depart, and the real game moves on to the next move, unnoticed and unrecognized by the vast majority of Western observers.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Moving beyond Iran, we leave the realm of state totalitarianism and enter the world of diffuse non-state Islamic radicalism. Non-state actors such as Al Qaeda and the various affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood display the same characteristics as the counterintelligence state, but they operate in a different context. Their goal is not to maintain internal control within a discrete political entity, but subversion: they aim to turn non-Muslims into dhimmis by stages, without the intended targets being aware of what is happening until it is too late.

To accomplish this goal, the Ikhwan uses all the techniques — provocation, penetration, diversion, disinformation, etc. — familiar to students of Soviet counterintelligence. These methods serve to undermine and subvert the targeted society below the level of public awareness.

One of the most successful counterintelligence operations yet mounted by the Muslim Brotherhood was the notorious “Flying Imams” affair. In November 2006 a handful of imams affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood front groups managed to paralyze the Transportation Security Agency (and through it the Department of Homeland Security) with an easy and inexpensive provocation at the Minneapolis airport. Their belligerence and litigiousness served to neutralize the already weak attempts by TSA officials to monitor and act upon specific behaviors that might be expected from potential Islamic terrorists.

The superficially apparent objective of the operation — to test security systems and procedures using a terrorist dry run — was accomplished. However, by drawing attention to their particular tactics, the imams compromised the future effectiveness of such methods. The subsequent out-of-court shakedown of USAirways could hardly suffice as a motivation for such an audacious public operation.

Understood from the point of view of the counterintelligence state, however, the Flying Imams were an enormous success. The incident was a probe, a diversion, and it neutered the capacity of domestic security agents to evaluate and react to evidence of Islamic terrorist behavior. By rewarding targeted lawfare, it ensured that no TSA or DHS official who values his career will ever take into consideration any obvious radical Muslim behavior until a bomb actually detonates.

The incident may accurately be labeled a “diversion” because the exact modus operandi of the probe — belligerent behavior, loud Arabic prayers, the demanding of seat belt extensions, etc. — is unlikely to be used again. What it accomplished instead was to restrict the scope of America’s available responses, so that the real attack, in whatever form it may take, will be impossible to deal with until dozens, hundreds, or thousands of Americans are already dead.